Time to prepare for the fourth industrial revolution

Korean Go grandmaster Lee Se-dol has claimed victory on Sunday for the first time in the fourth match against AlphaGo, Google’s artificial intelligence program. It is impressive because the victory came after he lost three straight matches to AlphaGo and many people predicted that he would lose all of the five matches. Some experts including the Korean Baduk (Go) Association complained that it is unfair because he competed against 1,200 computers, but the argument has become meaningless. Though artificial intelligence would outpace humans’ capacity in areas such as Go eventually, it showed that the machine is not perfect yet. Korea should not overreact to Lee Se-dol’s victory. It is important to channel the national interest in artificial intelligence, which increased exponentially after the Go matches, into a positive energy. It…